


The Unending March of Death

by Miss_sunfire



Series: One Shots [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crack, Dark Hermione Granger, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, Gore, Zombies, bellamione cult war prompt: Skeletons in the closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 18:04:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21040472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_sunfire/pseuds/Miss_sunfire
Summary: The zombie outbreak wasn't anything like anybody expected.After all, these zombies were polite, cordial, and...ran the local gas station?The fuck?





	The Unending March of Death

**Author's Note:**

> In today's news. Sunfire was struck with a sudden bolt of inspiration upon seeing a prompt in the discord. 
> 
> ...This also may or may not be based on my first ever DnD character. A lawful neutral necromancer that was the nicest person in the party.

* * *

The zombie Armageddon really, really wasn’t like anyone was expecting. There was, frankly, a very disappointingly small amount of cinematic mass slaughter. Neighbour did not turn on neighbour. Children did not attempt to eat their parents. Everyday people did not need to barricade themselves into dingy pubs to survive the rampaging horde. Nor did they have to fortify the shopping maul, or old mansions, or really any particularly spooky halloween set piece. Hell they didn’t even need to loot the abandoned stores and shops. 

I mean, fucking hell, the zombies didn’t even look or act the part!

Whatever virus, act of god, or capricious uncaring world caused the dead to rise also caused rot to set in faster. The smell for the first 48 hours was truly revolting. However, after that point all that was left of any of the corpses was shiny, sun bleached, mostly sterile bone. Sure, they were horrific shambling constructs of human bone...but it’s not like they were any more icky than the average high school science skeleton. 

Plus, they were almost universally uninterested in eating the brains, flesh or other assorted viscera of their fellow man. First contact with the zombie hordes was pretty cordial, all things considered. It started slow and small. A pack of around 20 skeletons had walked up to a wheat farm down in East Anglia, UK. 

One of the local farmers had taken a bad fall into a grain thresher just a few weeks prior. The accident had left his left leg amputated below the waste, and there was no way he could keep up the level of work needed to run the farm. He was already behind on his mortgage and payments to the megacorporation he leased the fields from. The bank had been sending nasty letters about his property being taken back if his harvest didn’t come through that summer. 

A harvest that he had no hope of growing if he didn’t get substantial, practically free help.

Which was part of why he didn’t run screaming as soon as he saw the zombie hordes. After all, what did he have to lose? He didn’t have a wife or kids. He couldn’t actually run away to escape. He was stuck, about to die and so scared he’d actually pissed himself as the swarm stopped two feet in front of him. 

“W-we l-live to s-ser-rve. H-how cannn weee he-l-lp h-human?” The lead skeleton had croaked out in a voice full of rumbling granite and death. 

“W-what?” The farmer had squeaked back, voice full of shock and disbelief.

“W-we l-live to s-ser-rve. S-show ussss h-how to helpppp the f-faarm.” The skeleton had replied automatically. 

“Oh, uh, c-could you maybe hoe the fields? A-a-a-and h-harvest the a-apples?” He had stuttered back in reply. 

“Yourrrr willllll b-be d-done. M-master.” The skeletons had chorused back before tromping off to do exactly that. 

Extremely proficiently as it turned out. 

They took breaks only when there was no work to do. They responded to the farmers commands instantly and without reservation. At least within reason. He found he couldn’t say, order them to hurt Jeremy from the next farm over (who had slept with his girlfriend back in high school, and who he was still holding a grudge against) or order the skeletons to destroy themselves. However, as long as it pertained to the working of the farm they complied eagerly and quickly.

Plus, if one of the skeletons was somehow injured, it either just put itself back together, or, if it was truly shattered, was swiftly replaced by another from who knows where. 

The week later swarms of skeletons started showing up at the rest of the farms in town, offering the same services and benefits to each of them. Then, similar things started happening all across town. The gas station was soon staffed entirely by the undead. As well as the old coal mine and rickety, dangerous car part factory. Soon, practically all the menial labor in the sleepy little rural town wasn’t actually done by humans. Leaving all the workers free to pursue their passions. Art, writing, that medical school degree they always meant to finish. Suddenly, they all had all the time in the world to get it done. 

The problem, of course, came when the megacorp owners of said factories, farms and businesses started wondering why productivity was up so drastically in all of their organizations. They decided that they would no longer pay the human workers, as, of course, they were no longer working. And thus deserved to starve.

The zombie hordes promptly ate them. 

The standoff with police the next day was...more complicated. The zombie hordes gave them, of all things, a polite ultimatum. 

“B-billlionaires arrrrre p-policy f-f-faailures. M-maintainnnn a-a b-bank acccccount less than 950 m-million d-dollars or b-be d-destroyed. I-Intttterfere in o-our b-business and b-be dessssstroyed.” They had croaked out in a great horder, circling all of the police. 

Those who shot back at them on the orders of the well to do mayor were beaten quite badly, though not fatally in any instance. Those who refused were not harmed in the slightest. 

Likewise, at that very moment, hordes of skeletons started practically teleporting all around the world. They seemed to just rise out of the ground in a sudden wave, surrounding their prey wherever they were. Billionaire industrialists, trust fund babies, corrupt politicians, oil company execs, ultra wealthy bankers and more were all targets. 

In each case the skeletons would pop up, deliver some brutal ultimatum, and then walk away once the promise to change the world for the better was extracted. 

Or, well, if they refused or failed to follow through...the skeletons had no problems eating the rich. 

There was much horror throughout the land. Much wringing of hands and calls for a solution. Someone, anyone, to figure out who had done this and to have them shot. 

Well, there was also much rejoicing. After all, all of the promises were easily completed without substantially hurting any of the prey’s quality of life. The resources from which were put to...well, not perfect use, but more use than being hoarded like gold in a dragon's hoard. On the whole, life seemed to get better, less stressful and more free for most ordinary, everyday people. 

About six months after the zombie hordes first appeared, Bellatrix Granger-Black decided it was finally time to investigate the basement lab her wife had been spending so much of her time in these last few months. She usually tried to leave Hermione a modicum of privacy, but, well, she was always a curious and impatient witch. There was only so long she was going to put up with Hermione’s shit. Cutting their date nights down to once every other week, instead of twice a week was simply unacceptable to her without sufficient reason. 

That very day she snuck down to Hermione super top-secret hidden laboratory while her darling wife was off at her job at the department of mysteries. What she found shocked, amused, appalled and aroused her greatly. Hundreds, no, thousands of tomes on advanced Black Magic were sprawled around the space. There seemed to be a particular focus on necromancy and magical constructs. Showcasing the boundless level of intelligence and ingenuity her wife maintained that got Bella so hot under the collar. 

Ingenuity which, if she was reading this right, Hermione had used to create a way to give magical constructs some level of primitive consciousness. Possibly a hold over from the fact that the key reagent of her formula was fresh human corpses. The consciousness and magic involved was somehow enough to replicate the process, if enough constructs were gathered in one place. The base structure almost seemed like a modified magical virus like curse. Bellatrix was struck by how much the whole thing sounded vaguely like the experimental AI systems Delphi had developed for her PhD in Computer Science.

You know, the one she’d just started to get successful results for about a year ago. That she’d been so excited to science babble about with Hermione. Despite the fact that Bella wasn’t as up on muggle science or technology as her wife and daughter. Though she did find their discussions on how to marry the two more interesting. 

Needless to say, when Hermione and Delphi snuck into the laboratory together that night, they squealed and jumped into the sky when Bella coughed, revealing herself to be hiding in a dark corner. 

“Hermione dearest, Delphi darling. Did you two end capitalism with the power of black magic and science?” Bellatrix huffed, arching an eyebrow threateningly. 

“I plead the fifth!” Delphi shouted back, eyes flitting about the room anxiously. 

“I can explain!” Hermione begged, her devastating pouty eyes filling with frightened tears. 

Bellatrix cackled. 

“I’m honestly not sure if I should be congratulating you or smacking you upside the head for doing something so rash. Then again, it’s not like I have any room to talk, so I guess let's break out the firewhiskey and you can tell me all about it.” Bellatrix said with a delighted grin, spinning away to saunter back upstairs to the kitchen.

They all got roaring drunk. Delphi passed out like the lightweight she was. Hermione and Bellatrix had _fantastic_ makeup sex. 

All was right in the world.


End file.
